Technical Note

Use of Sludge Ash as a Stabilizing Additive in Soil-Cement

Mixtures for Use in Road Pavements
1 2 3
Maria P. Durante Ingunza ; Kiev Luiz de Araújo Pereira ; and Olavo Francisco dos Santos Junior
personal use only; all rights reserved.

Abstract: This paper presents a study evaluating the use of sludge ash as a stabilizing additive to soil-cement mixtures for use in base and subbase
road pavements by investigating the mechanical behavior of these mixtures. The methodology consisted of materials testing, including the
geotechnical characterization of the soil and the mechanics of the soil-cement and the soil-cement-sludge ash mixtures. An unconfined
compression test evaluated the mechanical behavior of soil-cement mixtures with cement contents of 3, 6, and 9% compressed with normal,
intermediate, and modified pressures. The sludge ash contents added were of 5, 10, 20, and 30%. The results indicate increasing strength for all
ash levels studied. The largest gain in strength was for a mixture with 20% sludge ash, which increased the strength by 26% compared with the
mixture without sludge ash. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)MT.1943-5533.0001168. © 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Author keywords: Soil-cement; Chemical stabilization of soil; Ash sewage sludge.

Introduction Materials and Methods

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Sewage treatment plants produce a residue known as sewage sludge.
The most common form of treatment is to incinerate this residue,
which significantly reduces its volume. There is a global need for the
development of methods used to recover the waste sludge. The search
for environmentally friendly and economically viable so-lutions for
the final disposal of waste sludge is a challenge. Currently, a major
concern for environmental managers is eliminating this waste
correctly and reducing its storage costs. One solution is to use the
sewage sludge ash as a construction material. Sludge ash is consid-
ered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), U.S. Depart-
ment of Transportation as a byproduct material in pavement
construction [FHWA RD-97-148 (FHWA 2008)]. Several research
studies have used sludge ash as raw material, such as the following:
1. Addition of ash sludge to concrete: Tay (1987), Monz´ et al.
(1996), Fontes (2003), and Geyer et al. (1998);
2. Cement produced from sludge ash: Morales (1994), Onaka
(2000), and Tay and Show (1991);
3. Addition of sludge and sludge ash in paving: Brosch (1975),
Al Sayed et al. (1995), Durante Ingunza et al. (2013b), and
Feitosa (2009); and
4. As a raw material in the production of ceramics: Alleman and
Berman (1984) and in asphalt mixtures, Al Sayed et al.
(1995), Durante Ingunza et al. (2013a).
In this context, this paper evaluates the use of sludge ash from
a sewage treatment plant as an additive for soil-cement mixtures
for base and subbase layers of pavement.
1 The test calculated the cement content relative to the dry soil mass.
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Federal Univ. of Rio Grande
do Norte, Brazil; and Campus Universitário, Natal/RN 59072-970, Brazil
(cor-responding author). E-mail: durante@ct.ufrn.br;
pilarduranteingunza@gmail .com
2
M.Sc. in Civil Engineering, Federal Univ. of Rio Grande do Norte,
Brazil.
3
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Federal Univ. of Rio Grande
do Norte, Brazil; and Campus Universitário, Natal/RN 59072-970, Brazil.
Note. This manuscript was submitted on December 22, 2013; approved on
July 28, 2014; published online on September 4, 2014. Discussion per-
iod open until February 4, 2015; separate discussions must be submitted for
individual papers. This technical note is part of the Journal of Materials in
Civil Engineering, © ASCE, ISSN 0899-1561/06014027(3)/$25.00.
The soil used in this study is a fine, red-colored soil often found on
the Brazilian northeastern coast. According to the Unified Soil
Classification System (USCS), the soil classification is ML, i.e., silt
of low compressibility. A AASHTO classifies this soil as A-4, with
an index group of 5.3 California Bearing Ratio (CBR); tests per-
formed according to ASTM D1883-07e2 (ASTM 2007) presented
values less than 6% CBR and 0.05% expansion, indicating a low
support capacity for use in pavement bases and subbases. Thus, the
use of such a soil as a construction material for pavement layers is
only possible through a chemical stabilization.
The stabilizer used was ordinary portland cement. The sludge ash
was produced from sludge dredged on an anaerobic lagoon sys-tem
for domestic wastewater stabilization. The fresh sludge was classified
as a Class II-A waste (not inert and nonhazardous) according to
Brazilian standards [Associaçāo Brasileira de Normas Técnicas
(ABNT) 10:005 2004a, b] based on international stan-dards.
Compression tests considered three energy levels: normal [ASTM
3
D698-12 (ASTM 2012a); 600 kN · m=m of applied pres-sure],
intermediate, and modified [ASTM D1557-12 (ASTM 2012b); 2,700
3
kN · m=m of applied pressure]. The intermediate energy test
followed the same steps as the modified energy test, except for the
number of strokes per layer, which was 25 strokes, resulting in
3
energy of 1.260 kN · m=m .
The tests used soil and soil-cement mixtures with cement con-
tents of 3, 6, and 9%.
The test used cast specimens with cement contents of 0, 3, 6, and
9% for three compaction modes of the unconfined compression test.
The specimens were cured for 28 days in a humidified cham-ber. The
unconfined compression tests followed the procedures rec-ommended
by ASTM D2166-06 (ASTM 2006).
To evaluate the effect of the sludge ash additive, the study per-
formed unconfined compression tests on samples with sludge ash
additive levels of 5, 10, 20, and 30% relative to the solid-state
weight. The mixture selected to perform the study was the soil-
cement mixture with 9% cement, using an intermediate energy
test for the specimens. Table 1 provides the characteristics of the
studied materials. For each condition indicated in Table 1, the
study includes three experiments to evaluate the variability.

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Table 1. Identification of Analyzed Materials S100 S94C6
Identification Soil (%) Cement (%) Ash (%) S97C3 S91C9
20

(%)
S100 100 — —

waterconten
S97C3 97 3 —
S94C6 94 6 — 15

t
S91C9 91 9 —
S86C9A5 86 9 5
S81C9A10 81 9 10 10

Optimum
S71C9A20 71 9 20
S61C9A30 61 9 30
5
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Results
Mechanical Characterization Testing of Soil and
Soil-Cement
This study expressed the compaction test results in terms of the
compaction effect on the maximum dry weight and the optimum
moisture content. Fig. 1 shows that for the same compaction energy,
the specific maximum dry weight increases with increasing cement
content, and that for a given cement content, the dry weight increases
with increasing compaction energy. Fig. 2 shows that for a given
compaction energy, the optimum moisture content decreases with
increasing cement content, and that for given cement content, the
optimum moisture content decreases with increasing compact energy.
In the compaction curves, a shift toward the left and above was
observed, which means a dry unit weight increases and optimum
moisture content decreases, as expected. The increase of the dry unit
weight is because the cement has a higher dry unit weight value than
the soil.
Fig. 3 shows the results of the unconfined compression tests in
terms of the variation of the compressive strength with the cement
content and the compaction effort. As shown in Fig. 3, the strength
increases with the compaction effort and, for a given compaction
effort, the strength increases with increasing cement content.
According to the specifications of the Brazilian standards, soil
stabilization with cement should provide a minimum strength of
2.1 MPa. The data in Fig. 3 show that in the intermediate energy,
this value is reached with the maximum cement content (9%). In
the modified energy, the specification is reached with lower ce-
ment content (3%).
0
Normal Intermediate Modified
Compaction energy
Fig. 2. Effect of compaction effort and cement content on the
optimum moisture content in the compaction tests
Brazilian pavement specifications are based on standards and
procedures of the National Department of Transport Infrastructure
(DNIT) and the standards of the Brazilian Association of
Technical Standards (ABNT) using the specifications of ASTM
as main regulatory compliances.
Mechanical Characterization Testing of
Soil-Cement-Sludge Ash Mixtures
To study the addition of sewage sludge ash to the soil-cement
mixture, the trace chosen after the compression test was 91% soil þ
9% cement, molded at the intermediate energy. This trace has a
strength of 2,261 MPa, which meets the minimum refer-ence value
(2.1 MPa) defined by the Brazilian standard [DNIT 143/ 2010 (DNIT
2010)] for pavement base materials. The experiment added sludge
ash contents of 5, 10, 20, and 30% of the solid weight to the selected
trace (91% soil þ 9% cement). Fig. 4 shows the un-confined
compressive strength results of the sludge ash blends. The addition of
sludge ash at all weight percentages tested increased the strength of
the soil-cement mixtures. The greatest strength was with 20% sludge
ash, resulting in a 26% increase in strength compared

18 4
strength

S100 S100 S94C6

S97C3
m 3)

S97C3 S91C9
(kN/

S94C6
17
Unconfined compression

3
S91C9
weight

(MPa)
unit
dry

16 2
Maximum

15 1

14 0
Normal Intermediate Modified Normal Intermediate Modified
Compaction energy Compaction energy

Fig. 1. Effect of compaction energy and cement content on the max- Fig. 3. Test results of unconfined compression strength of soil-
imum dry unit weight in the compaction tests cement mixtures

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J. Mater. Civ. Eng., 2015, 27(7): 06014027

 3
Unconfined compression strength
2 References
M
P
a
(
1
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0 methods for solid waste.” NBR 10:004-10007, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
0 5 10
Ash content (%)
Fig. 4. Simple compressive strength of soil-cement-ash mixtures
17
Dry unit weight (kN/m 3)
16
15
14
13
0 5 10
Ash content (%)
Fig. 5. Effect of adding ash on the dry unit weight observed in the
molding of test specimens for unconfined compressive strength
to the control trace (without sludge ash). Monz´ et al. (1996)
obtained similar results. The samples were molded with the opti-
mum moisture content obtained in sample S91C9, which corre-
sponds to 18.3%. Fig. 5 shows the dry specific weight values after
applying the intermediate compaction energy. The results show
that the dry specific weight decreases with the increase in sludge
ash because sludge ash is less dense than soil.
Conclusions
The results of this study confirmed the feasibility of using sludge
ash as a stabilizing additive for soil-cement mixtures, and indicate
that it is possible to incorporate up to 30% sewage sludge ash
con-tent to a soil-cement mixture (91% soil and 9% cement) com-
pressed at an intermediate energy to produce a strength increase.
The largest gain in strength was with a 20% sludge ash content,
which increased the strength by 26% compared with the mixture
without sludge ash.
To assess the correct use of sludge ash as a stabilizing additive in
soil-cement mixtures, it is necessary to evaluate the consequences in
terms of life-cycle cost analysis of the pavement. Research carried
out in the last decade shows the economic, technical, and
environmental feasibility of the use of sludge in civil construc-tion.
Nevertheless, to implement in real scale, a further study shall
© ASCE
be performed with a life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA), as related
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